Friday, 1 July 2016

Triumph of the City

Edward Glaesar is (or was at the point his
author bio was written) the "Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of
Economics" at Harvard, which is a gloriously American job title (Glimp),
which is appropriate for this most American of books. By which I means it takes
the glorious diversity and variation of human society and implicitly bemoans
the fact that everywhere is not more like America.

I mean, the man makes some good points,
some very good ones, but this whole thing is so very grounded in a single
worldview that you can't help but bristle against aspect of it. Take, for
example, his views on education. His notion is that the education system in
many cities is failing, and fair enough. However, his solution is to suggest
either full on privatization of the education system, and let market forces
sort it out, or, (and he there's something of the 'both sides of the story'
pretence about this) have the state step in entirely and invest properly.
Trouble is, when you say 'Let the market decide', what you're also saying is
that 'enterprises will fail', which is all very well if you're talking about
office supplies or autoparts manufacturers, but a failing enterprise in
education is a failing school, with failing students, who can't just brush
themselves down and look for another job. Treating education as a business means
treating students as products, means treating people as objects, and that is the
top of a very, very slippery slope.

Glaeser is, however, clearly writing for a
very specific audience (the cover boasts of the books shortlisting for the
FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year, which should give you some idea).
This imposes certain constraints, as evidenced by the rhetorical knots he
twists himself in in order to justify simply talking about the possible impacts
of climate change. You do wonder at what point these arguments will become moot.